Paradise Lost

• “Did I request thee, Maker, from my clay

  To mould Me Man? Did I solicit thee

  From Darkness to promote me?”

  Adam in Paradise Lost; and the epigraph to Frankenstein.
• The idea of dualism is a recurrent theme in gothic literature, echoing the perceived division between good and evil.
• In Judeo-Christian religion, Satan was the fallen angel; once at God's right hand, he was expelled from the kingdom of heaven.
• Appearance and reality; good and evil; life and death; male and female are some of the dualisms that mark the Gothic text, Paradise Lost and Shelley's Frankenstein, in particular.
• “Remember that I am thy creature; I ought to be thy Adam, but I am rather the fallen angel, whom thou drivest from joy for no misdeed. Everywhere I see bliss, from which I alone am irrevocably excluded.” Ch. 10
• “But Paradise Lost excited different and far deeper emotions. I read it, as I had read the other volumes which had fallen into my hands, as a true history. It moved every feeling of wonder and awe [...]. I often referred the several situations, as their similarity struck me, to my own. Ch. 15.
• “…no Eve soothed my sorrows, nor shared my thoughts; I was alone. I remembered Adam’s supplication to his Creator. But where was mine? He had abandoned me..” Ch. 15.
• Creature & Adam -

  Frankenstein’s first creation; like Adam he is lonely and needs a companion; he commits acts of sin against his creator; he has to make sense of a totally new world; he is banished from ‘Eden’ out of the paradise of his family.
• Frankenstein & Adam - also commits an act of sin against God and is banished from a happy relationship and from the rest of mankind.
• Early in chapter 9 Alphonse tells Victor not to be excessive and immoderate in his grief for Justine and William. Victor in his narration says that he cannot do this, saying: “Now I could only answer my father with a look of despair, and endeavour to hide myself from his view.” Might this remind us of Adam feeling shame and hiding his nakedness from his own ‘father’ after the Fall?
• Both the monster and Frankenstein play God: Frankenstein in creating the creature in the first place. Later, when the roles are reversed, the creature reminds Frankenstein ‘I am your master’ and controls his life
• The monster rebels against his creator. Like Satan, he seeks revenge by destroying the thing that his creator loves most.
• Frankenstein also rebels against God by creating the monster.